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Scalar Effects of Social Networks on Language Variation

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Scalar Effects of Social Networks on Language Variation [This is a pre-print version of an article to appear in Language Variation and Change. Please consult the final version if citing.] Scalar effects of social networks on language variation Devyani Sharma Queen Mary, University of London ABSTRACT The role of social networks in language variation has been studied using a wide range of metrics. This study critically examines the effect of different dimensions of networks on different aspects of language variation. Three dimensions of personal network (ethnicity, nationality, diversity) are evaluated in relation to three levels of language structure (phonetic form, accent range, language choice) over three generations of British Asians. The results indicate a scaling of network influences. The two metrics relating to qualities of an individual’s ties are more historically and culturally specific, whereas the network metric that relates to the structure of an individual’s social world appears to exert a more general effect on accent repertoires across generations. This two-tier typology—network qualities (more culturally contingent) and network structures (more general)—facilitates an integrated understanding of previous studies and a more structured methodology for studying the effect of social networks on language. INTRODUCTION Social networks have long been recognized as central to how people speak. Some studies have identified powerful general network mechanisms in language change (e.g., Milroy and Milroy, 1978), while others have focused on more community-specific dynamics (e.g., Gal, 1978). A broad picture of how and why language is influenced by social networks thus tends to be complicated by the difficulty of comparing across studies and the tendency to select network measures relevant to the community in question. The present study broadens the lens to better understand network dynamics. It contrasts three different aspects of social network structure—grounded in separate hypotheses—and explores their impact on three different levels of language variation: phonetic form, style range, and language choice. The data examined come from multiple generations of a British Asian community in the United Kingdom, and so additionally permit a consideration of how network effects behave over time in a community undergoing social change. The research design thus incorporates three dimensions: • A network scale (3 levels of network information) • A structural scale (3 levels of language structure) • A temporal scale (3 degrees of community depth) The study finds that some social network influences are very localized—influencing a particular speech feature for a particular subgroup at a particular historical phase of the community. This is especially true for qualities present within an individual’s personal networks (e.g., proportion of a Scalar effects of social networks on language variation 1 certain ethnicity in the network). By contrast, a structural network measure, which concerns the geometry of the network itself, is shown to exert a more stable, wide-ranging influence. Strength of ties have been argued in the literature to be one such general influence on language variation. In this community, another structural property of networks, the diversity of a person’s network, is shown to correspond closely to how diverse their speech repertoire is, regardless of cross-cutting factors such as gender, age, or historical phase. The article thus distinguishes between two ways in which social networks influence language: their role as the basic structure of our social worlds, potentially exerting more general influence in the data, and their role as a conduit for culturally and historically specific social qualities to affect language. This exploratory two-way typology may help to organize some of the multidimensionality of social networks, inform analysts’ choices of metrics, and “create a more unified social-network research methodology” in the study of language variation (de Bot & Stoessel, 2002:5). The article first outlines a few concepts from social network theory, used in the next section to structure a brief review of sociolinguistic network studies to date. The following section provides details of the community, the research design, and the various indexes used. The analysis that follows reveals temporal and structural scaling in network effects on language across generations in the community. The discussion focuses on why some network components exert more localized effects in the community than others do, with implications for wider network modeling in sociolinguistics. PROPERTIES OF NETWORKS The Milroys’ seminal study of Belfast (Milroy, 1987; Milroy & Milroy, 1978) not only transformed sociolinguistics, it shifted a long-standing focus on strong network ties in the wider study of language change (“the limit of spread is sure to be along some line of weakness in the network of oral communication” [Bloomfield, 1933:328]). While affirming the conservative effect of strong ties, the Belfast study showcased a community in which the central role of weak ties in diffusion was apparent. Milroy (1987) investigated many dimensions of social networks in the community, but the most influential has been the factor of strength of ties, as measured through density (how interlinked nodes are) and multiplexity (the number of social connections between two nodes). Many sociolinguistics textbooks still cite only these two measures, even though many studies since have employed other metrics, reviewed in the next section. In her closing comments, Milroy (1987) observed that “a convincing case could be made… for using several different kinds of indicator,” noting that although social networks may have “a very general and possibly universal applicability . the indicators which may be said to reflect the underlying structure of personal relationships will vary in accordance with the investigator’s perception of the most relevant and easily measurable categories” (216). Her comments highlight a tension between claims of general, even universal, network effects on language and their more community-specific embedding. This tension has impeded systematic comparison of network effects across studies, but it may be resolvable with a more reflexive and comparative approach in methodology (how analytic choices affect outcomes) and in theory (why some network traits may have a more consistent effect on language than others). The present study takes up these open questions: Should we use “several different kinds of indicator” to fully understand network dynamics in a speech community? How localized, general, or even universal, is the effect of such indicators on language use? To begin to answer these questions, it is useful to step back from the historical focus on strength of ties, while in no way questioning its centrality in language variation, and instead begin with a broader picture of the many loci in a network we could in principle study. One important contrast is whether we choose to examine personal networks or whole networks (sometimes Scalar effects of social networks on language variation 2 termed ego network analysis and total network analysis; Degenne & Forsé [1999:13]; Wetherell [1998:127]). α β A A A ego ego D B C B C B C γ δ (a) ego star (b) ego zone (c) second order zones and whole networks Figure 1: Stars, zones, and networks (modified from Degenne and Forsé 1999: 26) Figure 1 illustrates these levels of network information we might use. An ego star (Figure 1a) represents a set of relations between a given actor (ego) and others (alters). In ego star data, only properties of individual stars, or personal networks, can be studied, such as the multiplexity of each ego-alter dyad, the proportion of a given qualitative trait in each star (e.g., ethnicity, class, sexuality), or the total number of alters in each star. This provides some network information per individual while still permitting stratified sampling, as participants need not be linked in a single network. For these reasons, ego star data are common in sociolinguistic research. Figure 1b describes a closely related type of information, namely, the ego zone. This expands the information known about an ego to include facts about alter-alter ties, but still excludes details about how this cluster is positioned in the wider network. In sociolinguistics, as reviewed next, studies that extend to this level have tended to focus on density (the number of mutual ties among alters of a given ego). The present study introduces and examines a different ego zone measure, network diversity. Finally, we can add in the zones of alters, as in Figure 1c, to create second-order ego zones (cf. Milroy, 1987:46–47), moving toward increasingly complex sociograms and ultimately whole networks. Whole networks permit an examination of more complex structural components such as clusters, chains, cohesion, centrality, structural holes, and other formations. These are potentially very powerful for understanding language variation but, for reasons noted in the next section, current sociolinguistic methods are somewhat limited in their ability to conduct whole network analysis. In addition to these levels of network data, there exists a contrast in the type of information we might choose to examine. As social networks represent the structural arrangement of people as well as the interactions transacted between them, we can distinguish between structural and content (or quality) components at any level. Structural components represent the actual geometry
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